This author, a medical doctor/anaesthesiologist was cited on the Books and Movie Reviews thread in evaluating happiness as a cournerstone liberal value. Much of that book is apparently also a criticism of alternative medicine. The article below spells out some of his cautions, which I find reasonable at some points; however, he reminds me so much of the physicians I work with who are aghast when I hand them peer reviewed medical journal abstracts showing the supportive evidence for such things as Hawthorn Berry for congestive heart failure. These folks seem to either have no time to continue educating themselves, or are so locked into their APA/FDA straight-jacket that fear of being sued outweighs other considerations:

http://www.policyreview.org/aug01/dworkin.html


"At my hospital, many patients come to the alternative medicine clinic to try therapies that are less invasive and less toxic than those prescribed by allopathic doctors. If the alternative therapies fail, patients return to allopathic medicine. They merely want to see if they can get by with an intermediate step. Other patients come to the clinic because allopathic medicine cannot help them. In both populations, the value of alternative medicine exists largely in the mind. A tincture of hope combined with a vague respect for anything scientific drives these nervous patients into our clinic.

Yet is this so wrong? In truth, conventional medical therapy has little effect on outcome in the vast majority of cases seen by doctors; patients will either recover on their own or stay with their disease. This is a confirmed epidemiological fact. If medical science has a definite limit and doctors are inconsequential in the majority of cases, then why not let patients pursue alternative, nonscientific modalities? Most of these therapies are harmless, and from an epidemiological point of view, they may not matter. Besides, most patients use them in conjunction with allopathic medicine and not as a substitute.

To the extent that alternative medical therapies produce an effect, it is likely to be positive. Patients may feel better because of the placebo effect. Moreover, because many subfields of alternative medicine draw on a religious tradition, patients find in alternative medicine ways of making their pain and misery more comprehensible. Because alternative medicine is not confined by the limits of rational or testable knowledge, its powers of explanation are enormous, and patients leave the alternative medicine clinic thinking that their troubles have real spiritual significance. When patients ask, �Why me?� or �Why must these things be?� allopathic medicine has few answers to give other than a descriptive, physical explanation of why painful things occur. But alternative medicine has persuasive dreams and seductive legends at its disposal. It can tell patients that their psychospiritual centers have yet to be awakened, or that their unique history as human beings is the cause of their illness. Alternative medicine has a tremendous capacity to put difficult situations in a new light, even to justify them, and this makes it as powerful as religion.

The connection with religion is important. Alternative medicine so artfully conspires to make patients believe that their illness has spiritual significance that once patients absorb the fiction, they are practically enslaved by it. As a physician, I have never been able to disabuse patients of their alternative medicine beliefs. Because these beliefs have no empirical basis, fighting them with an array of scientific facts is like shooting at a swarm of bees with a gun. Yet the ability of alternative medicine to mesmerize patients simply attests to an elemental truth about human existence: The only way for patients to stop believing in something is for them to stop living. When allopathic science reaches the limit of what it can offer and patients are told by doctors to simply get on as best they can, patients simply transfer their affections to alternative medicine.

The value of alternative medicine remains unproven in clinical trials. Yet the fact that it remains unproven only helps alternative medicine sustain people�s hopes; what is not impossible may still be possible. Scientific medicine operates with a completely different sensibility. It encourages an endless process of hypothesis, disputation, and refutation in order to prove the value of medical therapy. While this process makes scientific medicine more intellectually honest than alternative medicine, it leaves little room for a dream in a patient�s mind. The rational approach of scientific medicine often does nothing more than knock terminally ill patients on their heads, and with such determination that one wonders what conceit there might be in forcing sick people to know the unvarnished truth about their futures."